Caravaggio's St Augustine: Whitfield Fine Art Research the Discovery of Caravaggio's Original

LONDON - The Caravaggio of St Augustine, exhibited for the first time in the current exhibition in Ottawa, Caravaggio & His Followers in Rome, is a rediscovery from the collection made by the artist’s patrons Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani and his brother Marchese Vincenzo.

A label tucked in the back of the stretcher revealed the name of the heir to the collection in the nineteenth century, and its subject, dimensions and description correspond with the work first listed by Vincenzo Giustiniani in the inventory drawn up by him in 1638 shortly before his death. Cleaning has revealed Caravaggio’s characteristic technique in many comparisons with works done in Rome around the turn of the 16th/17th century, including his habit of leaving he ground showing through in parts, alterations to the profiles of the figures, and adjustments made necessary by the optical observations he worked from, detail by detail. The painting was obscured by a thick layer of discolored varnish, and Prof. Silvia Danesi Squarzina, who recently published the inventories of the Giustiniani collection, recognized the work of an eighteenth century restorer who worked on the pictures when they were still in the Palazzo Giustiniani, and who used a preparation made up of white of egg instead of varnish. Many of the fifteen paintings by Caravaggio originally listed in the 1638 inventory have gone missing, including the portrait he did of his patron, Cardinal Benedetto, and two of them - the Agony in the Garden and a Portrait of a Courtesan, are believed to have been destroyed in Berlin at the end of the Second World War.

The painting has been examined by experts from Rome, with x-rays and infrared reflectography, and the technique has been recognized as identical to that used by the master in works done around 1600. It can be traced in the Giustiniani inventories, which have been studied thoroughly by Prof Silvia Danesi Squarzina, up till 1859, and it was sold before 1862, when the heir emptied the premises.

The painting of St Augustine by Caravaggio has now been requested for the exhibition Roma al tempo di Caravaggio at Palazzo Venezia, Rome, from Nov. 10 2011 to 5 February 2012, and will be one of the subjects of a symposium of Caravaggio specialists on November 24 and 25, 2011

BASEL - Wealthy collectors at Art Basel, the world's top fair for modern and contemporary art, had to dig deep into their pockets this week to get hold of high-quality works, amid signs the market was returning to pre-crisis peaks.

BASEL - Despite trumpeting a new globalism with first-time gallery inclusions from Lebanon, Thailand, and Hungry, Art Basel remains a desperately parochial European affair with a smattering of top American and English dealers.

BASEL - The shoulder-bumping queue for the 11 a.m. VIP entry for the 42nd edition of Art Basel, the preeminent granddaddy of international art fairs, was claustrophobically reminiscent of the circa 2007 boom days when art-market money was flush and flowing.

FIGUERES, SPAIN - The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí acquired an oil-on-panel work from 1934 entitled Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape. The Foundation paid 7.8 million Euros to purchase this major surrealist work from a private owner who wishes to remain anonymous.

LONDON - Anish Kapoor has cancelled plans to present his sculptures at the National Museum of China in Beijing, in protest against the continuing detention of Ai Weiwei. He had been asked by the British Council to consider a show at the newly renovated museum in Tiananmen Square as part the “UK Now” festival in China late next year.

EUGENE – Eugene delivered a “wow” moment for The Antiques Roadshow on Saturday after a Norman Rockwell painting was deemed to be worth an estimated $500,000, tied for the second most valuable item ever appraised in the 15-year history of the Public Broadcasting Service television program.

LONDON - Billions of dollars of art will be on show in Basel at the annual fair this week and in London ahead of a big series of sales, with experts cautiously optimistic that buyers are set to snap up rare treasures.

When the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) announced yesterday that it would expand to Europe, most assumed it would set up shop in Switzerland during Art Basel, Europe's largest and most prestigious art fair.

The incident of disappearence of spactacles of India’s Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi from Sevagram in Maharastra state has come to limelight yesterday, but in fact the spactles were said to be stolen some four months back, according to Sevagram Trust members.

Maqbool Fida Husain, an artist whose modernist reinterpretations of mythic and religious subjects made him India’s most famous painter and, in recent years, a target of right-wing Hindu groups, died on Thursday in London. He was 95.